Toy firms buying into drive to end gender divisions

Major retailers are beginning to develop gender-neutral toys like baby dolls for boys as calls for an end to toy ‘apartheid’ grow

By Emma Charlton / AFP, PARIS

Sun, Dec 23, 2012 - Page 14

With firefighter kits for girls and baby dolls for boys, toys are breaking out of the gender ghetto this Christmas thanks to retailers willing to brush aside some hard-to-shift stereotypes.

The latest to chip away at the toy apartheid, French supermarket Super-U, has printed a holiday season catalogue showing boys cradling dolls and girls piloting remote-controlled cars — billed as a first for the country.

“This is not activism,” said Thierry Desouches, the group’s head of external relations. “But it’s about keeping up with changes in society, with the shifting roles of men and women. It’s about breaking down stereotypes: pink and ironing boards for girls, blue and cars for boys, it’s really too narrow.”

French retailer La Grande Recre has also brought in a line of gender-neutral DIY kits, kitchens and cleaning trolleys aimed at boys and girls alike.

Sold in France, Switzerland, Spain, Belgium and Morocco, the toys are packaged in orange, white or purple with no pink or blue in sight.

The line is doing well, with sales of the toy vacuum cleaner up 40 percent in a year, said Franck Mathais, the chain’s sales director.

The French moves bring the country in line with a snowballing trend in Britain and the US.

Last year, a four-year-old US girl named Riley Maida shot to prominence for a YouTube video showing her ranting against the tyranny of princess gear for girls and superhero stuff for boys.

The clip, which went viral, summed up the frustration many families feel with what they perceive as forceful gender stereotyping by toy manufacturers.

In Britain, campaigners have claimed a string of victories in the past year or so.

London’s Harrods this summer unveiled a vast gender-neutral zone organized by theme instead of by sex and in December last year, the Hamleys toy store removed “boy” and “girl” signposts, replacing them with red and white ones.

Britain’s Early Learning Centre (ELC), a leading toy retailer, was targeted in 2009 by a grassroots campaign dubbed “Pinkstinks” denouncing stereotyping in toys.

“Back then, the ELC had a double-page spread on things people do, fireman, policeman etc, which were all boys except for a girl as an old-fashioned nurse,” said Emma Moore, who launched the drive with her sister Abi five years ago. “The next page was all girls in princess dresses.”

Stung into action, the ELC’s Web site now pointedly shows girls playing with construction sets or dressed as firefighters and boys rocking baby dolls.

So how much is really changing?

Haude Constantin-Bienaime runs a day care center in the Paris suburbs that was the first in the country to adopt a policy on gender discrimination.

“Little children will try anything. It’s what we adults offer that influences them, and society is full of gender stereotypes,” she told reporters.

“This is one way to tackle stereotyping,” she said of the retailers’ moves. “But walk into a toy store and there’s still a very clear divide between games for boys and ones for girls.”

“There is movement, but it is fairly superficial,” added Moore, who feels girls have most to lose from the current state of affairs. “Boys get adventure, action, science and discovery. What girls get is very often a dumbed down version of that, or go and sit in front of a mirror.”

“You still see a glut of toys which are about being pretty,” Moore said, with makeup kits targeting toddlers as young as two. “Little girls are encouraged through play to become obsessed with what they look like.”

Pinkstinks uses Twitter and Facebook to name and shame bad practice — and often gets its own way, like recently when British supermarket chain Sainsbury’s removed the “boy” and “girl” tags from doctor’s and beautician’s outfits.

The group has logged messages of support from all over the world, including every country in South America.

“We were first to verbalize what was actually bothering quite a few people,” Moore said. “As a culture, we are obsessed by gender, but it didn’t used to be like this.”

She added: “If you go back 20 or 30 years and look at toy catalogues it’s fascinating, you see pages of toys for children — not for boys and girls.”

Moore, like many campaigners, believes the core driver for splitting the market into his and hers is purely economic: you get to sell twice as much.

“I have no doubt there are differences between boys and girls — I can see it in my children and my nephews. But there is growing evidence that suggests the differences are fairly minute,” she said. “It’s just so boring, apart from being damaging.”